How soldiers and officers had fun and lived. Soldier's life during the Great Patriotic War Life during the war

One generation on the shoulders?
Is it too much?
Trials and controversies
Is it too much?

Evgeny Dolmatovsky

War photo and film chronicles, in their best frames, have brought to us through the decades the true appearance of a soldier - the main worker of the war. Not a poster boy with a blush all over his cheek, but a simple fighter, in a shabby overcoat, a crushed cap, in hastily wound windings, won that terrible war at the cost of his own life. After all, what we are often shown on TV can only remotely be called war. “Soldiers and officers are moving across the screen in light and clean sheepskin coats, in beautiful earflaps, and felt boots! Their faces are as clear as morning snow. Where are the burnt out overcoats with the greasy left shoulder? It can’t not be greasy!.. Where are the exhausted, sleep-deprived, dirty faces?” - asks veteran of the 217th Infantry Division Belyaev Valerian Ivanovich.

How did a soldier live at the front, in what conditions did he fight, was he afraid or did not know fear, was he cold or had shoes on, was dressed, was heated, did he subsist on dry rations or was fed to his fill with hot porridge from the field kitchen, what did he do during short breaks between battles...

The simple life at the front, which was nevertheless the most important factor in the war, became the subject of my research. After all, according to the same Valerian Ivanovich Belyaev, “memories of being at the front are associated for me not only with battles, forays to the front line, but also with trenches, rats, lice, and the death of comrades.”

Working on the theme is a tribute to the memory of those killed and missing in action in that war. These people dreamed of a quick victory and a meeting with loved ones, hoping that they would return safe and sound. The war took them away, leaving us letters and photographs. In the photo there are girls and women, young officers and experienced soldiers. Beautiful faces, smart and kind eyes. They don’t yet know what will happen to them all very soon...

When starting work, we talked with many veterans, re-read their front-line letters and diaries, and rely only on eyewitness accounts.

So, the morale of the troops and their combat effectiveness largely depended on the organization of the soldiers’ everyday life. Supplying troops, providing them with everything they needed at the time of retreat, breaking out of encirclement, differed sharply from the period when Soviet troops switched to active offensive operations.

The first weeks and months of the war, for well-known reasons (suddenness of the attack, sluggishness, shortsightedness, and sometimes outright mediocrity of military leaders) turned out to be the most difficult for our soldiers. All the main warehouses with supplies of material resources on the eve of the war were located 30-80 km from the state border. This placement was a tragic miscalculation of our command. In connection with the retreat, many warehouses and bases were blown up by our troops due to the impossibility of evacuating them, or destroyed by enemy aircraft. For a long time, the supply of hot food to the troops was not established; the newly formed units did not have camp kitchens or cooking pots. Many units and formations did not receive bread and crackers for several days. There were no bakeries.

From the first days of the war there was a huge flow of wounded, and there was no one and nothing to provide assistance: “The property of sanitary institutions was destroyed by fires and enemy bombings, the sanitary institutions being formed were left without property. The troops have a great shortage of dressings, narcotic drugs and serums.” (from a report from the headquarters of the Western Front to the Sanitary Administration of the Red Army dated June 30, 1941).

Near Unecha in 1941, the 137th Rifle Division, which at that time was part of first the 3rd and then the 13th armies, emerged from encirclement. Mostly they went out in an organized manner, in full uniform, with weapons, and tried not to give up. “...In the villages they shaved if they could. There was one emergency: a soldier stole a piece of lard from the locals... He was sentenced to death, and only after the women cried was he pardoned. It was difficult to feed ourselves on the road, so we ate all the horses that came with us...” (from the memoirs of a military paramedic of the 137th Infantry Division Bogatykh I.I.)

Those retreating and leaving the encirclement had one hope for the local residents: “They came to the village... there were no Germans, they even found the chairman of the collective farm... they ordered cabbage soup with meat for 100 people. The women cooked it, poured it into barrels... For the only time in the whole circle they ate well. And so they are hungry all the time, wet from the rain. We slept on the ground, chopped spruce branches and dozed... We weakened everything to the extreme. Many of their feet were so swollen that they couldn’t fit into their boots...” (from the memoirs of A.P. Stepantsev, head of the chemical service of the 771st Infantry Regiment of the 137th Infantry Division).

The autumn of 1941 was especially difficult for the soldiers: “It snowed, it was very cold at night, and many of their shoes broke. All I have left of my boots are the tops and the toes facing out. I wrapped the shoes in rags until I found old bast shoes in one village. We all grew like bears, even the young ones began to look like old people... need forced us to go and ask for a piece of bread. It was a shame and pain that we, the Russian people, are the masters of our country, but we walk through it furtively, through forests and ravines, sleeping on the ground, and even in trees. There were days when we completely forgot the taste of bread. I had to eat raw potatoes, beets if they were found in the field, or even just viburnum, but it’s bitter, you can’t eat much of it. In villages, requests for food were increasingly refused. I also happened to hear this: “How tired of you we are…” (from the memoirs of R.G. Khmelnov, a military paramedic of the 409th Infantry Regiment of the 137th Infantry Division). The soldiers suffered not only physically, but also mentally. It was difficult to bear the reproaches of the inhabitants remaining in the occupied territory.

The plight of the soldiers is evidenced by the fact that in many units they had to eat horses, which, however, were no longer good for lack of food: “The horses were so exhausted that before the campaign they had to be given caffeine injections. I had a mare - if you poke her, she falls, and she can’t get up on her own, you pick her up by the tail... Once a horse was killed by a burst from an airplane, half an hour later the soldiers took it away, so that there were no hooves left, only the tail... Food was tight, I had to carry food on myself for many kilometers... Even bread from bakeries was carried for 20-30 kilometers...”, A.P. Stepantsev recalls his everyday life at the front.

Gradually, the country and the army recovered from the sudden attack of the Nazis, and the supply of food and uniforms to the front was established. All this was handled by special units - the Food and Forage Supply Service. But the rear guards did not always act promptly. Commander of the communications battalion of the 137th Infantry Division F.M. Lukyanyuk. recalls: “We were all surrounded, and after the battle, many of my fighters put on warm German uniforms under their overcoats and changed their shoes into German boots. I lined up my soldiers, and I see that half of them are like Krauts...”

Guseletov P.I., commissar of the 3rd battery of the 137th Infantry Division: “I arrived in the division in April... I selected fifteen people from the companies... All my recruits were tired, dirty, ragged and hungry. The first step was to get them in order. I got hold of homemade soap, found threads, needles, and scissors that collective farmers used to shear sheep, and they began to shear, shave, patch holes and sew on buttons, wash clothes, and wash themselves...”

Getting a new uniform for soldiers at the front is a whole event. After all, many ended up in the unit in their civilian clothes or in an overcoat from someone else’s shoulder. In the “Order on conscription for the mobilization of citizens born in 1925 and older until 1893, living in the territory liberated from occupation” for 1943, paragraph No. 3 states: “When reporting to the assembly point, have with you: ... a mug, a spoon, socks, two pairs of underwear, as well as preserved Red Army uniforms.”

War veteran Valerian Ivanovich Belyaev recalls: “...We were given new overcoats. These were not overcoats, but simply luxury, as it seemed to us. The soldier's overcoat is the hairiest... The overcoat was very important in front-line life. It served as a bed, a blanket, and a pillow... In cold weather, you lie down on your overcoat, pull your legs up to your chin, and cover yourself with the left half and tuck it in on all sides. At first it’s cold - you lie there and shiver, and then your breath becomes warm. Or almost warm.

You get up after sleep - your overcoat is frozen to the ground. With a shovel you cut away a layer of earth and lift up the intact overcoat along with the earth. Then the earth will fall off on its own.

The whole overcoat was my pride. In addition, an overcoat without holes provided better protection from cold and rain... On the front line, it was generally forbidden to take off the overcoat. All that was allowed was to loosen the waist belt... And the song about the overcoat was:

My overcoat is for traveling, it is always with me

It's always like new, the edges are cut,

The army is harsh, my dear.”

At the front, the soldiers, who longingly remembered their home and comfort, managed to settle more or less tolerably on the front line. Most often, the fighters were located in trenches, trenches, and less often in dugouts. But without a shovel you can’t build a trench or a trench. There were often not enough entrenching tools for everyone: “We were given shovels on one of the first days of our stay in the company. But here's the problem! The company, numbering 96 people, got only 14 shovels. When they were given out, there was even a small dump... The lucky ones began to dig in..." (from the memoirs of V.I. Belyaev).

And then a whole ode to the shovel: “A shovel in war is life! I dug myself a trench and lie still. Bullets whistle, shells explode, their fragments fly by with a short squeal, you don’t care at all. You are protected by a thick layer of earth...” But a trench is a treacherous thing. During rains, water accumulated at the bottom of the trench, reaching the soldiers to their waists, or even higher. During shelling, I had to sit in such a trench for hours. To get out of it means to die. And they sat, there was no other way, if you want to live, be patient. There will be a calm - you will wash, dry, rest, sleep.

It must be said that during the war, very strict hygiene rules were in effect in the country. In military units located in the rear, inspections for lice were systematically carried out. To avoid pronouncing this dissonant term, the wording “inspection according to Form 20” was used. To do this, the company, without tunics, lined up in two ranks. The sergeant-major commanded: “Prepare for inspection according to Form 20!” Those standing in the ranks took off their undershirts up to the sleeves and turned them inside out. The sergeant-major walked along the line and the soldiers who had lice on their shirt were sent to the sanitary inspection room. War veteran Valerian Ivanovich Belyaev recalls how he himself passed through one of these sanitary inspection rooms: “It was a bathhouse with a so-called “fryer,” that is, a chamber for frying (warming up) wearables. While we were washing in the bathhouse, all our things were heated in this “fryer” at a very high temperature. When we received our things back, they were so hot that we had to wait for them to cool down... There were “fryers” in all garrisons and military units. And at the front they also arranged such roasting sessions.” The soldiers called lice “the second enemy after the Nazis.” Frontline doctors had to fight them mercilessly. “It happened at the crossing - there was just a halt, even in the cold everyone took off their tunics and, well, crushed them with grenades, there was only a crash. I will never forget the picture of how the captured Germans scratched themselves furiously... We never had typhus; lice were destroyed by sanitary treatment. Once, out of zeal, they even burned their tunics along with the lice, only the medals remained,” recalled V.D. Piorunsky, a military doctor of the 409th Infantry Regiment of the 137th Infantry Division. And further from his own memoirs: “We were faced with the task of preventing lice, but how to do this at the forefront? And we came up with one way. They found a fire hose twenty meters long, punched ten holes in it every meter, and capped the end. They boiled water in gasoline barrels and continuously poured it into a hose through a funnel, it flowed through the holes, and soldiers stood under the hose, washed themselves and groaned with pleasure. Underwear was changed, and outer clothing was fried. Then a hundred grams, a sandwich in the teeth, and into the trenches. In this way, we quickly washed the entire regiment, so that even from other units they came to us for experience ... "

Rest, and above all sleep, was worth its weight in gold in war. There was always a lack of sleep at the front. On the front line, everyone was forbidden to sleep at night. During the day, half of the personnel could sleep, and the other half monitor the situation.

According to the memoirs of V.I. Belyaev, a veteran of the 217th Infantry Division, “during the campaign, sleep was even worse. They were not allowed to sleep more than three hours a day. The soldiers literally fell asleep on the move. One could observe such a picture. There is a column coming. Suddenly one fighter breaks ranks and moves next to the column for some time, gradually moving away from it. So he reached the roadside ditch, tripped and was already lying motionless. They run up to him and see that he is fast asleep. It’s very difficult to push someone like that and put him in a column!.. It was considered the greatest happiness to cling to some kind of cart. The lucky ones who succeeded got a good night's sleep while on the go.” Many slept for the future because they knew that another such opportunity might not arise.

The soldier at the front needed not only cartridges, rifles, and shells. One of the main issues of military life is the supply of food to the army. A hungry man will not fight much. We have already mentioned how difficult it was for the troops in the first months of the war. Subsequently, the supply of food to the front was streamlined, because failure to deliver could result in the loss of not only shoulder straps, but also life.

Soldiers were regularly given dry rations, especially on the march: “For five days, each was given: three and a half smoked herrings of fairly large size... 7 rye crackers and 25 lumps of sugar... It was American sugar. A pile of salt was poured on the ground and it was announced that everyone could take it. I poured salt into a can, tied it in a cloth and put it in a duffel bag. No one took salt except me... It was clear that we would have to go from hand to mouth.” (from the memoirs of V.I. Belyaev)

The year was 1943, the country actively helped the front, giving it equipment, food, and people, but still the food was very modest.

Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, artilleryman Ivan Prokofyevich Osnach, recalls that the dry rations included sausage, lard, sugar, candy, and stewed meat. The products were American made. They, the artillerymen, were supposed to be fed 3 times, but this norm was not observed.

The dry ration also included shag. Almost all men in the war were heavy smokers. Many who did not smoke before the war did not part with rolled-up cigarettes at the front: “Tobacco was bad. They gave out shag as a smoke: 50 grams for two... It was a small pack in a brown package. They were issued irregularly, and smokers suffered greatly... I, a non-smoking guy, had no need for shag, and this determined my special position in the company. The smokers jealously protected me from bullets and shrapnel. Everyone understood perfectly well that with my departure to the next world or to the hospital, the additional ration of shag would disappear from the company... When they brought shag, a small dump appeared around me. Everyone tried to convince me that I should give my share of shag to him...” (from the memoirs of V.I. Belyaev). This determined the special role of shag in the war. Ingenuous soldiers' songs were written about her:

When you receive a letter from your beloved,

Remember distant lands

And you’ll smoke, and with a smoke ring

Your sadness flies away!

Eh, shag, shag,

You and I have become friends!

The patrols look vigilantly into the distance,

We are ready for battle! We are ready for battle!

Now about hot meals for soldiers. There were camp kitchens in every unit, in every military unit. The most difficult thing is to deliver food to the front line. Products were transported in special thermos containers.

According to the procedures that existed at that time, the delivery of food was carried out by the company sergeant major and the clerk. And they had to do this even during the battle. Sometimes one of the fighters was sent for lunch.

Very often, the delivery of food was carried out by female drivers in semi-trucks. War veteran Feodosia Fedoseevna Lositskaya spent the entire war behind the wheel of a lorry. There was everything in the work: breakdowns that she, out of ignorance, could not fix, and spending the night in the forest or steppe under the open sky, and shelling by enemy aircraft. And how many times did she cry bitterly from resentment when, having loaded the car with food and thermoses with tea, coffee and soup, she arrived at the airfield to the pilots with empty containers: on the way, German planes flew in and riddled all the thermoses with bullets.

Her husband, military pilot Mikhail Alekseevich Lositsky, recalled that even in their flight canteen the food was not always good: “Forty-degree frost! Now I would like a mug of hot tea! But in our dining room you won’t see anything except millet porridge and dark stew.” And here are his memories of his stay in a front-line hospital: “The stuffy, heavy air is thickly saturated with the smell of iodine, rotten meat and tobacco smoke. A thin soup and a crust of bread - that's all for dinner. Occasionally they give you pasta or a couple of spoons of mashed potatoes and a cup of barely sweet tea..."

Belyaev Valerian Ivanovich recalls: “With the onset of darkness, lunch appeared. On the front line, we eat twice: immediately after it gets dark and before dawn. During daylight hours we had to make do with five lumps of sugar, which were given out daily.

Hot food was delivered to us in a green thermos the size of a bucket. This thermos was oval in shape and carried on the back on straps, like a duffel bag. Bread was delivered in loaves. We had two people go for food: the foreman and the clerk...

...To eat, everyone crawls out of the trench and sits in a circle. One day we were having lunch this way when suddenly a flare flashed in the sky. We all hug the ground. The rocket goes out and everyone starts eating again. Suddenly one of the fighters shouts: “Brothers! Bullet!" - and takes out a German bullet from his mouth, which was stuck in the bread ... "

During transitions, on the march, the enemy often destroyed camp kitchens. The fact is that the kitchen boiler rose above the ground much higher than human height, since there was a firebox under the boiler. A black chimney rose even higher, from which smoke billowed. It was an excellent target for the enemy. But, despite the difficulties and danger, the front-line cooks tried not to leave the soldiers without hot food.

Another concern at the front is water. Soldiers replenished their supplies of drinking water by passing through populated areas. At the same time, it was necessary to be careful: very often, when the Germans retreated, they rendered the wells unusable and poisoned the water in them. Therefore, the wells had to be guarded: “I was very impressed by the strict procedure for providing our troops with water. As soon as we entered the village, a special military unit immediately appeared and posted sentries at all water sources. Typically these sources were wells whose water had been tested. The guards didn't let us get close to the other wells.

...The posts at all wells were around the clock. Troops came and went, but the sentry was always at his post. This very strict procedure guaranteed complete safety for our troops in the provision of water...”

Even under German fire, the sentry did not leave his post at the well.

“The Germans opened artillery fire on the well... We ran away from the well to a fairly large distance. I look around and see that the sentry remained at the well. Just lay down. That’s the kind of discipline the protection of water sources had!” (from the memoirs of V.I. Belyaev)

When solving everyday problems, the people at the front showed maximum ingenuity, resourcefulness and skill. “We received only the bare minimum from the rear of the country,” recalls A.P. Stepantsev. - We have adapted to do a lot ourselves. They made sleighs, sewed harnesses for horses, made horseshoes - all the beds and harrows were forged in the villages. They even cast the spoons themselves... The head of the regimental bakery was Captain Nikitin, a Gorky resident - under what conditions did he have to bake bread! In the destroyed villages there was not a single intact oven - and after six hours they baked, a ton a day. They even adapted their own mill. Almost everything for everyday life had to be done with one’s own hands, and without an organized way of life, how could the combat effectiveness of the troops be?

Even on the march, the soldiers managed to get themselves boiling water: “...Village. There were chimneys sticking out all around, but if you get off the road and approach such a chimney, you can see burning logs. We quickly got the hang of using them. We put a pot of water on these logs - one minute and the tea is ready. Of course, it was not tea, but hot water. It is not clear why we called it tea. At that time we didn’t even think that our water was boiling to the misfortune of people...” (Belyaev V.I.)

Among the fighters, who were accustomed to making do with little even in pre-war life, there were simply true jacks of all trades. One of these craftsmen is recalled by P.I. Guseletov, political officer of the 238th separate anti-tank fighter division of the 137th rifle division: “We had Uncle Vasya Ovchinnikov on the battery. He was originally from the Gorky region, spoke “o”... In May, a cook was wounded. They call Uncle Vasya: “Can you temporarily?” - "Can. Sometimes, while mowing, we cooked everything ourselves.” To repair the ammunition, rawhide leather was required - where to get it? Again to him. - "Can. It used to be that we tanned the leather at home and tanned everything ourselves.” The horse has become unfettered in the battalion farm - where can I find a master? - “I can do this too. At home, it used to be that everyone did the forging themselves.” For the kitchen we needed buckets, basins, stoves - where to get them, you can’t get them from the rear - “Can you do it, Uncle Vasya?” - “I can, I used to make iron stoves and pipes at home myself.” In winter you needed skis, but where can you get them at the front? - "Can. At home around this time we went bear hunting, so we always made our own skis.” The company commander's pocket watch stopped - again to Uncle Vasya. - “I can do the watch, I just need to take a good look.”

What can I say, when he even got the hang of casting spoons! A master at any task, everything came out so well for him, as if it was done by itself. And in the spring he baked such pancakes from rotten potatoes on a piece of rusty iron that the company commander did not disdain...”

Many veterans of the Great Patriotic War remember with kind words the famous “People’s Commissar” 100 grams. In signed by the People's Commissar of Defense I.V. Stalin's Decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR “On the introduction of vodka into supply in the active Red Army” dated August 22, 1941 stated: “To establish, starting from September 1, 1941, the distribution of 40º vodka in the amount of 100 grams per person per day to the Red Army soldiers and the commanding staff of the first line of the active army." This was the first and only experience of legalized distribution of alcohol in the Russian army in the 20th century.

From the memoirs of military pilot M.A. Lositsky: “There will be no combat missions today. Free evening. We are allowed to drink the prescribed 100 grams...” And here’s another: “I wish I could capture the faces of the wounded officers when they were poured 100 grams and brought to them along with a quarter of bread and a piece of lard.”

M.P. Serebrov, commander of the 137th Infantry Division, recalls: “Having stopped pursuing the enemy, units of the division began to put themselves in order. The camp kitchens arrived and began distributing lunch and the required hundred grams of vodka from captured reserves...” Tereshchenko N.I., platoon commander of the 4th battery of the 17th artillery regiment of the 137th Infantry Division: “After successful shooting, everyone gathered to have breakfast. We were located, of course, in the trenches. Our cook, Masha, brought…home-style potatoes. After the front-line hundred grams and congratulations from the regiment commander, everyone cheered up..."

The war lasted difficult four years. Many soldiers walked along front roads from the first to the last day. Not every soldier had the fortunate opportunity to get leave and see family and friends. Many families remained in the occupied territory. For most, the only thread that connected him to home was letters. Front-line letters are a truthful, sincere source for studying the Great Patriotic War, little influenced by ideology. Written in a trench, a dugout, in the forest under a tree, soldiers' letters reflect the whole gamut of feelings experienced by a person defending his homeland with arms in hand: anger at the enemy, pain and suffering for his native land and his loved ones. And in all the letters there is faith in a quick victory over the Nazis. In these letters, a person appears naked as he really is, for he cannot lie and be a hypocrite in moments of danger, either in front of himself or in front of people.

But even in war, under bullets, next to blood and death, people tried to simply live. Even on the front line, they were worried about everyday issues and problems common to everyone. They shared their experiences with family and friends. In almost all letters, soldiers describe their front-line life, military life: “Our weather is not very cold, but there is decent frost and especially wind. But we are dressed well now, a fur coat, felt boots, so we are not afraid of frosts, the only bad thing is that they are not sent closer to the front line...” (from a letter from Guard Captain Leonid Alekseevich Karasev to his wife Anna Vasilyevna Kiseleva in the city of Unecha dated December 4, 1944 G.). The letters sound concern and concern for loved ones who are also having a hard time. From a letter from Karasev L.A. to his wife in Unecha dated June 3, 1944: “Tell the one who wants to evict my mother that if I just come, he won’t be happy... I’ll turn his head to the side...” And here is from his letter dated December 9, 1944: “Nyurochka, I really feel sorry for you that you have to freeze. Press your bosses, let them provide you with firewood...”

From a letter from Mikhail Krivopusk, a graduate of school No. 1 in Unecha, to sister Nadezhda: “I received from you, Nadya, a letter where you write how you hid from the Germans. You write to me which of the policemen mocked you and on whose instructions the cow, bicycle and other things were taken from you, if I remain alive, I will pay them off for everything...” (dated April 20, 1943). Mikhail did not have the chance to punish the offenders of his relatives: on February 20, 1944, he died liberating Poland.

Almost every letter sounds longing for home, for family and loved ones. After all, young and handsome men went to the front, many in the status of newlyweds. Karasev Leonid Ivanovich and his wife Anna Vasilievna, who were mentioned above, got married on June 18, 1941, and four days later the war began, and the young husband went to the front. He was demobilized only at the end of 1946. The honeymoon had to be postponed for almost 6 years. In his letters to his wife there is love, tenderness, passion and inexpressible melancholy, the desire to be close to his beloved: “Beloved! I returned from headquarters, tired, and walked all night. But when I saw your letter on the table, all the fatigue went away and the anger too, and when I opened the envelope and found your card, I kissed it, but it’s paper, not you alive... Now your card is pinned to me at the head of my bed, Now I have the opportunity, no, no, and to look at you...” (dated December 18, 1944). And in another letter there’s just a cry from the heart: “Darling, I’m sitting in a dugout right now, smoking makhorka - I remembered something, and such melancholy, or rather anger, is taking over everything... Why am I so unlucky, because people get the opportunity to see their relatives and loved ones, but I’m still unlucky... Darling, believe me, I’m tired of all this writing and paper... you understand, I want to see you, I want to be with you for at least an hour, and to hell with everything else, you know, to hell, I want you - that’s all... I’m tired of this whole life of waiting and uncertainty... I now have one outcome... I’ll come to you without permission, and then I’ll go to the penal company, otherwise I won’t wait to meet you!.. If only there was vodka, Now I would get drunk..." (dated August 30, 1944).

Soldiers write in their letters about home, remember pre-war life, dream of a peaceful future, of returning from the war. From a letter from Mikhail Krivopusk to his sister Nadezhda: “If you look at those green meadows, at the trees near the shore... the girls are swimming in the sea, you think that you would throw yourself overboard and swim. But never mind, we’ll finish off the German, and then…” In many letters there is a sincere manifestation of patriotic feelings. This is how our fellow countryman Evgeniy Romanovich Dyshel writes about the death of his brother in a letter to his father: “... You should be proud of Valentin, because he died in battle honestly, went into battle fearlessly... In past battles, I avenged him... Let's meet, we'll talk in more detail...” ( dated September 27, 1944). Major tankman Dyshel never had the opportunity to meet his father - on January 20, 1945, he died liberating Poland.

From a letter from Leonid Alekseevich Karasev to his wife Anna Vasilievna: “The great joy is that we are conducting an offensive along almost the entire front and quite successfully, many large cities have been taken. In general, the successes of the Red Army are unprecedented. So Hitler will soon be kaput, as the Germans themselves say” (letter dated June 6, 1944).

Thus, miraculously preserved to this day, the soldier’s triangles with a field mail number instead of a return address and a black official stamp “Viewed by military censorship” are the most sincere and reliable voices of the war. Living, authentic words that came to us from the distant “forties, fateful”, today sound with particular force. Each of the letters from the front, even the most insignificant at first glance, even if deeply personal, is a historical document of the greatest value. Each envelope contains pain and joy, hope, melancholy and suffering. You experience an acute sense of bitterness when you read these letters, knowing that the one who wrote them did not return from the war... The letters are a kind of chronicle of the Great Patriotic War...

The front-line writer Konstantin Simonov wrote the following words: “War is not a continuous danger, the expectation of death and thoughts about it. If this were so, then not a single person would be able to withstand its weight... War is a combination of mortal danger, the constant possibility of being killed, chance and all the features and details of everyday life that are always present in our lives... A person at the front is busy with an endless number of things , about which he constantly needs to think and because of which he does not have time to think about his safety at all...” It was everyday everyday activities, to which he had to be distracted all the time, that helped the soldiers overcome fear and gave the soldiers psychological stability.

65 years have passed since the end of the Great Patriotic War, but the end to its study has not yet been set: there remain blank spots, unknown pages, unclear destinies, strange circumstances. And the topic of front-line life is the least explored in this series.

Bibliography

1. V. Kiselev. Fellow soldiers. Documentary storytelling. Publishing house "Nizhpoligraph", Nizhny Novgorod, 2005.
2. IN AND. Belyaev. Fire, water and copper pipes. (Memoirs of an old soldier). Moscow, 2007
3. P. Lipatov. Uniforms of the Red Army and Navy. Encyclopedia of technology. Publishing house "Technology for Youth". Moscow, 1995
4. Fund materials of the Unecha Museum of Local Lore (front-line letters, diaries, memories of veterans).
5. Memoirs of veterans of the Great Patriotic War, recorded during personal conversations.

Indeed, both books and films very rarely showed what was happening “behind the scenes” of military life. And, if we analyze it this way, then the same films do not show that part of a soldier’s life that would generally be uninteresting for the viewer, but for the soldier was probably the most significant.

This is everyday life.

It seems to be not such an interesting thing, but, nevertheless, significant. The film “Only Old Men Go to Battle” was most similar to the truth, but the living conditions of the pilots were somewhat different from those of the infantry or tank crews. The latter, according to the directors, have nothing special to show.

Meanwhile, even in war conditions, attention was paid to the organization of everyday life. How good? Well, I wish it were better, but what happened was what it was. And I would like to talk specifically about what happened during that war exactly when the fighting died down.

Food, sleep, warmth and a bath - that’s what the fighter needed. But, despite the difficult conditions, people read books and newspapers, went to the cinema, engaged in amateur performances, sang, danced to the accordion, listened to the radio and relaxed. True, mainly in the second echelon and on holidays. Five to ten times a year.

Let's leave food for later, let's talk about things that are even more rare in description, but very significant. About sanitation.

“Feeding lice at the front” - probably everyone has heard this common phrase. Judging by archival documents, the scale of the spread of lice in the troops during the Great Patriotic War reached catastrophic proportions, and an entire sanitary armada was even created to combat lice, which included over a hundred special trains and disinfection units.

96 out of 100 fighters had lice.

So, for example, by September 1941, in parts of the Western Front, the “infestation” of personnel exceeded 85%, and on the Kalinin Front - 96%. There was a shortage of soap, baths and laundries. There was no time for everyday life at that difficult time. Plus, even during the war years, the quality of soap produced in the country sharply decreased and the supply of washing soda almost completely stopped.

At Headquarters, the flow of reports caused concern, and personnel from the Scientific Research Testing Institute of the Red Army (NIISI KA) were sent into battle.

Scientific research brought the first practical results by the end of 1941: special bath-laundry and disinfection trains (BPDT) began to enter service with the Red Army, in which up to a hundred soldiers could be treated in an hour. Such trains consisted of 14-18 cars: changing rooms, formaldehyde chambers, showers, laundries and dryers. The locomotive provided steam and hot water to this entire bath and laundry plant.

Special trains were disinfected at the rate of 100 soldiers per hour.

By the end of 1942, the Red Army already had more than a hundred such trains. Naturally, the special trains could not squeeze out all the lice and nits at the front. They operated far from the front line and processed mainly reinforcements arriving in the active army, or fighters from units withdrawn for replenishment or reorganization.

Washing uniforms was carried out by field laundry teams (FLO) and laundry-disinfection teams (DLT), which killed lice with a whole range of chemicals.

Insects were poisoned with turpentine, DDT and burned with fire.

The main means of combating insects were “synthetic insecticides”, which were used to treat the soldiers and their uniforms. At first, these were bisethylxanthogen, on the basis of which “soap K” and “preparation K-3” were made, chlorinated turpentine (SK) and its soap version SK-9, pyretol, anabasine sulfate and other products.

It is clear that for many reasons the orderlies could not treat every soldier of the Red Army.

And then the soldiers used folk methods of fighting lice. For example, frying. In general terms, the action looked like this: lice-infested tunics and padded jackets were put into a metal barrel, covered with a lid on top and fried over a fire. But often the uniform perished along with the lice.

Frequent scallops, which came to the front mainly through humanitarian aid from the population, were very popular in the trenches. The lice were simply combed out. As the front-line soldiers say, almost everyone had their hair cut to zero and even shaved their eyebrows, and tried not to wear sheepskin coats or other “stitchers.”

And one more detail. Again, according to the stories, as soon as the nutrition became better at the end of 1942 - beginning of 1943, the lice somehow calmed down. “Lice, she is an infection, she loves the hungry and the weak,” my grandfather often used to say.

By the end of the war, the problem of head lice in the army began to disappear. One of the reasons was the normalization of bath and laundry services for troops. So, if in 1942 soldiers washed in the bathhouse 106,636,000 times, then in 1944 it was almost 3 times more - 272,556,000 times. In 1942, rear units disinfected 73,244,000 sets of uniforms, and in 1944 - already 167.6 million sets.

“They had very rich woolen blankets,” recalled my grandfather Nikolai. Considering that he often found himself in the Germans' positions earlier than other soldiers, and even when the Germans were not going to retreat, he could well have acted out. But... The woolen blankets of the Germans were simply breeding grounds for insects.

During the war, the treatment of patients consisted of the use of various ointments; the Demyanovich method was also widespread, according to which naked patients rubbed a solution of hyposulfite into the body from top to bottom, and then hydrochloric acid. In this case, pressure is felt on the skin, similar to rubbing with wet sand. After treatment, the patient may feel itching for another 3-5 days as a reaction to the killed mites. At the same time, many fighters during the war managed to get sick with these diseases dozens of times...

In general, washing in the bathhouse and undergoing sanitary treatment took place mainly while in the second echelon, that is, without directly participating in the battles.

In the summer, soldiers had the opportunity to swim in rivers, streams, and collect rainwater. In winter, it was not always possible not only to find a ready-made bathhouse built by the local population, but also to build a temporary one ourselves.

Here, especially in places where building a bathhouse is problematic (the same Rostov steppes, for example), another invention of NIISI KA came to the rescue - the autobath.

Actually, a truck with a sealed body in which a stove and a water tank are mounted. But where there is no firewood, a diesel stove was fine.

Front-line life was clearly one of the factors in the combat effectiveness of personnel; it created conditions when the presence of the most necessary phenomena in the lives of soldiers became vital.

Soldiers and officers lived in conditions where the most necessary things to ensure life, such as food, bathing and sanitary treatment, monetary allowance and free time from service, became practically the only pleasures available. And since they were often absent, their presence turned into a self-sufficient complex of “joys of life.”

But we still had to fight...

And yet, lice were eliminated, shoes and uniforms were repaired, pots were soldered, razors were sharpened. It was a whole army of those who helped the soldiers overcome hardships and hardships.

We can talk for a long time about how bad or not entirely bad the front-line life of Soviet soldiers was. It is also worth saying that, unlike the German army, leave in the Red Army was a rarity, one of the highest awards. So to be far from the front line, after a bath, in a clean place - that was already not bad. It helped.

Just a series of photographs telling that they tried to improve life at the front, if not properly, then at least simply to improve it.

Probably it turned out better than the Germans. Judging by the result, isn't it?

The topics of the history of the Great Patriotic War are multifaceted. For many years, the war was described from the point of view of political leadership, the state of the fronts in relation to “manpower” and equipment. The role of an individual in war was illuminated as part of a gigantic mechanism. Particular attention was paid to the ability of the Soviet soldier to carry out the order of the commander at any cost, and the readiness to die for the Motherland. The established image of war was questioned during the Khrushchev “thaw”. It was then that the memoirs of war participants, notes of war correspondents, front-line letters, diaries began to be published - sources that are least susceptible to influence. They raised “difficult topics” and revealed “blank spots”. The theme of man in war came to the fore. Since this topic is vast and diverse, it is not possible to cover it in one article.

Based on front-line letters, memoirs, diary entries, as well as unpublished sources, the authors will still try to highlight some of the problems of front-line life during the Patriotic War of 1941-1945. How the soldier lived at the front, in what conditions he fought, how he was dressed, what he ate, what he did during short breaks between battles - all these questions are important, and it was the solution of these everyday problems that largely ensured victory over the enemy. At the initial stage of the war, soldiers wore a tunic with a fold-down collar, with special pads at the elbows. Usually these covers were made of tarpaulin. The gymnast was worn with pants that had the same canvas linings around the knees. On the feet there are boots and windings. It was they who were the main grief of the soldiers, especially the infantry, since it was this branch of the army that served in them. They were uncomfortable, flimsy and heavy. This type of shoe was driven by cost savings. After the publication of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the USSR army increased to 5.5 million people in two years. It was impossible to put boots on everyone.

They saved on leather, boots were made from the same tarpaulin 2. Until 1943, an indispensable attribute of an infantryman was a roll over the left shoulder. This is an overcoat that was rolled up for mobility and put on so that the soldier did not experience any discomfort when shooting. In other cases, the roll-up caused a lot of trouble. If in the summer, during the transition, the infantry was attacked by German aircraft, then because of the slope, the soldiers were visible on the ground. Because of it, it was impossible to quickly escape to a field or shelter. And in the trench they simply threw it under their feet - it would have been impossible to turn around with it. The soldiers of the Red Army had three types of uniforms: everyday, guard and weekend, each of which had two options - summer and winter. Between 1935 and 1941, numerous minor changes were made to the clothing of the Red Army soldiers.

The field uniform of the 1935 model was made from fabric of various shades of khaki color. The main distinguishing element was the tunic, which in its cut, the same for soldiers and soldiers, resembled a Russian peasant shirt. There were also summer and winter gymnasts. The summer uniform was made from cotton fabric of a lighter color, and the winter uniform was made from woolen fabric, which had a richer, darker color. The officers wore a wide leather belt with a brass buckle decorated with a five-pointed star. The soldiers wore a simpler belt with an open buckle. In field conditions, soldiers and officers could wear two types of gymnasts: everyday and weekend. The weekend tunic was often called a French jacket. The second main element of the uniform was trousers, also called breeches. Soldiers' trousers had diamond-shaped reinforcing stripes on the knees. For footwear, officers wore high leather boots, and soldiers wore boots with windings or tarpaulin boots. In winter, military personnel wore an overcoat made of brownish-gray cloth. Soldiers' and officers' overcoats, identical in cut, nevertheless differed in quality. The Red Army used several types of hats. Most units wore budenovki, which had a winter and summer version. However, at the end of the 30s, summer Budenovka

was everywhere replaced by the cap. Officers wore caps in the summer. In units stationed in Central Asia and the Far East, wide-brimmed Panama hats were worn instead of caps. In 1936, a new type of helmet began to be supplied to the Red Army. In 1940, noticeable changes were made to the design of the helmet. Officers everywhere wore caps; the cap was an attribute of officer power. Tankers wore a special helmet made of leather or canvas. In summer they used a lighter version of the helmet, and in winter they wore a helmet with a fur lining. The equipment of Soviet soldiers was strict and simple. A canvas duffel bag, model 1938, was common. However, not everyone had real duffel bags, so after the war began, many soldiers threw away gas masks and used gas mask bags as duffel bags. According to the regulations, every soldier armed with a rifle was required to have two leather cartridge bags. The bag could store four clips for a Mosin rifle - 20 rounds. Cartridge bags were worn on the waist belt, one on each side.

The officers used a small bag, which was made of either leather or canvas. There were several types of these bags, some of them were worn over the shoulder, some were hung from the waist belt. On top of the bag was a small tablet. Some officers carried large leather tablets that were hung from the waist belt under their left arm. In 1943, the Red Army adopted a new uniform, radically different from that used until then. The system of insignia has also changed. The new tunic was very similar to the one used in the tsarist army and had a stand-up collar fastened with two buttons. The main distinguishing feature of the new uniform was the shoulder straps. There were two types of shoulder straps: field and everyday. Field shoulder straps were made of khaki-colored fabric. On the shoulder straps near the button they wore a small gold or silver badge indicating the type of military service. Officers wore a cap with a black leather chinstrap. The color of the band on the cap depended on the type of troops. In winter, generals and colonels of the Red Army had to wear hats, and the rest of the officers received ordinary earflaps. The rank of sergeants and foremen was determined by the number and width of the stripes on their shoulder straps.

The edging of the shoulder straps had the colors of the branch of the military. Among the small arms in the first years of the war, the legendary “three-line rifle”, the three-line Mosin rifle of the 1891 model, enjoyed great respect and love among the soldiers. Many soldiers gave them names and considered the rifle a real comrade in arms that never failed in difficult battle conditions. But, for example, the SVT-40 rifle was not liked because of its capriciousness and strong recoil. Interesting information about the life and everyday life of soldiers is contained in such sources of information as memoirs, front-line diaries and letters, which are least susceptible to ideological influence. For example, it was traditionally believed that soldiers lived in dugouts and pillboxes. This is not entirely true, most of the soldiers were located in trenches, trenches or simply in the nearest forest without regretting it at all. It was always very cold in the bunkers; at that time, there were no autonomous heating systems or autonomous gas supply, which we now use, for example, to heat a summer house, and therefore the soldiers preferred to spend the night in the trenches, throwing branches at the bottom and stretching a raincoat on top.

The soldiers’ diet was simple: “Shchi and porridge are our food” - this proverb accurately characterizes the rations of soldiers’ kettles in the first months of the war and, of course, a soldier’s best friend is crackers, a favorite delicacy especially in field conditions, for example on a battle march. It is also impossible to imagine a soldier’s life during short periods of rest without the music of songs and books, which gave rise to a good mood and raised spirits. But still, the most important role in the victory over fascism was played by the psychology of the Russian soldier, who was able to cope with any everyday difficulties, overcome fear, survive and win. During the war, the treatment of patients consisted of the use of various ointments; the Demyanovich method was also widespread, according to which naked patients rubbed a hyposulfite solution and then hydrochloric acid into the body - from top to bottom.

In this case, pressure is felt on the skin, similar to rubbing with wet sand. After treatment, the patient may feel itching for another 3-5 days, as a reaction to killed mites. At the same time, many war fighters managed to get sick from these diseases dozens of times. In general, washing in the bathhouse and undergoing sanitary treatment, both the “old men” and the reinforcements arriving at the unit, took place mainly while in the second echelon, that is, without directly participating in the battles. Moreover, washing in the bathhouse was most often timed to coincide with spring and autumn. In the summer, soldiers had the opportunity to swim in rivers, streams, and collect rainwater. In winter, it was not always possible not only to find a ready-made bathhouse built by the local population, but also to build a temporary one ourselves. When one of the Smershev heroes in Bogomolov’s famous novel “The Moment of Truth (In August 1944)” pours out the freshly prepared stew before unexpectedly moving to another place, this is a typical case of front-line life. Redeployments of units were sometimes so frequent that not only military fortifications, but also domestic premises were often abandoned soon after their construction. The Germans washed in the bathhouse in the morning, the Magyars in the afternoon, and ours in the evening. The life of a soldier can be divided into several categories related to where this or that unit was located. The greatest hardships befell the people on the front line; there was no usual washing, shaving, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

There is a common cliche: they say, war is war, and lunch is on schedule. In fact, there was no such routine, much less any menu. It must be said that then a decision was made to prevent the enemy from seizing the collective farm livestock. They tried to get him out, and where possible, they handed him over to military units. The situation near Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942 was completely different, when there were forty-degree frosts. There was no talk of any dinner then. The soldiers either advanced or retreated, regrouped their forces, and there was no positional warfare as such, which means it was impossible to even somehow organize life. Usually once a day the foreman brought a thermos with gruel, which was simply called “food.” If this happened in the evening, then there was dinner, and in the afternoon, which happened extremely rarely, lunch. They cooked what they had enough food for, somewhere nearby, so that the enemy could not see the kitchen smoke. And they measured each soldier a ladle into a pot. A loaf of bread was cut with a two-handed saw, because in the cold it turned into ice. The soldiers hid their “rations” under their overcoats to keep them warm at least a little. Each soldier at that time had a spoon behind the top of his boot, as we called it, an “entrenching tool,” an aluminum stamping.

It served not only as a cutlery, but also as a kind of “calling card”. The explanation for this is this: there was a belief that if you carry a soldier’s medallion in your trouser pocket-piston: a small black plastic pencil case, which should contain a note with data (last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, where you were called up from), then you will definitely be killed. Therefore, most fighters simply did not fill out this sheet, and some even threw away the medallion itself. But they scratched out all their data on a spoon. And therefore, even now, when search engines find the remains of soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War, their names are determined precisely from the spoons. During the offensive, dry rations of crackers or biscuits and canned food were given out, but they really appeared in the diet when the Americans announced their entry into the war and began to provide assistance to the Soviet Union.

The dream of any soldier, by the way, was fragrant overseas sausages in jars. Alcohol was only available at the front line. How did this happen? The foreman arrived with a can, and in it was some kind of cloudy liquid of a light coffee color. A pot was poured onto the compartment, and then each was measured with the cap of a 76-mm projectile: it was unscrewed before firing, releasing the fuse. Whether it was 100 or 50 grams and what strength, no one knew. He drank, “bit” his sleeve, that’s all the “drunkenness.” In addition, from the rear of the front, this alcohol-containing liquid reached the front line through many, as they now say, intermediaries, so both its volume and “degrees” decreased. Films often show that a military unit is located in a village where living conditions are more or less human: you can wash yourself, even go to the bathhouse, sleep on a bed... But this could only be the case for headquarters located at some distance from the front line.

But at the very front, the conditions were completely different and extremely harsh. The Soviet brigades formed in Siberia had good equipment: felt boots, regular and flannel foot wraps, thin and warm underwear, cotton trousers, as well as cotton pants, a tunic, a quilted padded jacket, an overcoat, a balaclava, a winter hat and mittens made of dog fur. A person can endure even the most extreme conditions. Soldiers slept, most often, in the forest: you cut spruce branches, make a bed out of them, cover yourself with these paws on top, and lie down for the night. Of course, frostbite also occurred. In our army, they were taken to the rear only when there was almost nothing left of the unit except its number, banner and a handful of fighters. Then the formations and units were sent for reorganization. And the Germans, Americans and British used the principle of rotation: units and subunits were not always on the front line, they were replaced by fresh troops. Moreover, soldiers were given leave to travel home.

In the Red Army, out of the entire 5 million-strong army, only a few received leave for special merits. There was a problem of lice, especially in the warm season. But the sanitary services in the troops worked quite effectively. There were special “vosheka” cars with closed van bodies. Uniforms were loaded there and treated with hot air. But this was done in the rear. And on the front line, the soldiers lit a fire so as not to violate the rules of camouflage, took off their underwear and brought it closer to the fire. The lice just crackled and burned! I would like to note that even in such harsh conditions of unsettled life in the troops there was no typhus, which is usually carried by lice. Interesting facts: 1) A special place was occupied by the consumption of alcohol by personnel. Almost immediately after the start of the war, alcohol was officially legalized at the highest state level and included in the daily supply of personnel.

Soldiers considered vodka not only as a means of psychological relief, but also as an indispensable medicine in the Russian frosts. It was impossible without her, especially in winter; bombings, artillery shelling, tank attacks had such an effect on the psyche that only vodka was the only way to escape. 2) Letters from home meant a lot to the soldiers at the front. Not all soldiers received them, and then, listening to the reading of letters sent to their comrades, everyone felt it as their own. In response, they wrote mainly about the conditions of front-line life, leisure, simple soldier entertainment, friends and commanders. 3) There were moments of rest at the front. A guitar or accordion sounded. But the real holiday was the arrival of amateur artists. And there was no more grateful spectator than the soldier, who, perhaps in a few hours, was about to go to his death. It was difficult for a person in war, it was difficult to watch a dead comrade fall nearby, it was difficult to dig graves in hundreds. But our people lived and survived in this war. The unpretentiousness of the Soviet soldier and his heroism made victory closer every day.

Literature.

1. Abdulin M.G. 160 pages from a soldier's diary. – M.: Young Guard, 1985.

2. The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: encyclopedia. – M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985.

3. Gribachev N.M. When you become a soldier... / N.M. Gribachev. – M.: DOSAAF USSR, 1967.

4. Lebedintsev A.Z., Mukhin Yu.I. Fathers-commanders. – M.: Yauza, EKSMO, 2004. – 225 p.

5. Lipatov P. Uniforms of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. – M.: Publishing House “Technology for Youth”, 1995.

6. Sinitsyn A.M. Nationwide assistance to the front / A.M. Sinitsyn. – M.: Voenizdat, 1985. – 319 p.

7. Khrenov M.M., Konovalov I.F., Dementyuk N.V., Terovkin M.A. Military clothing of the Armed Forces of the USSR and Russia (1917-1990s). – M.: Voenizdat, 1999.

I.S. Ivanova

Vladimir NADEZHDIN The further the events of the Great Patriotic War go into history, the more various inaccuracies, conjectures, and even falsehoods and lies are layered on them.
Veterans note that in many literary works, television and films, the truth is often distorted, especially when it comes to the details of military life. What was it like, how did the soldiers survive in the cold and heat on the front line, between battles? The editors asked Mikhail Fedorovich ZAVOROTNY, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War who went through it from beginning to end, to answer these and other questions. After the Victory, the former senior sergeant of the Red Army and lieutenant of the Lyudova Army worked in leadership positions in the republic - he was the chairman of the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee and the deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee of the BSSR.

Mikhail Fedorovich, is it possible to talk about some kind of orderliness in the life of soldiers during the Great Patriotic War?
- The life of a soldier can be divided into several categories related to where this or that unit was located. The greatest hardships befell the people on the front line - there was no usual washing, shaving, breakfast, lunch or dinner. There is a common cliche: they say, war is war, and lunch is on schedule. In fact, there was no such routine, much less any menu.
In this regard, I will give one episode. Before the war, I was a cadet at the first Kyiv Artillery School, and when hostilities began, we began to be pushed to the forefront of the defense of the Ukrainian capital. We stopped for a rest at the location of some military unit. There was a field kitchen there, where something was being cooked. A lieutenant in a new uniform with a creaky sword belt approached and asked the cook: “Ivan, what will be for lunch today?” He replied: “Borscht with meat and porridge with meat.” The officer seethed: “What? I have people working on earthworks, and you will feed them borscht with meat! Look, I have meat and borscht!”
But this happened only on rare days of the war. It must be said that then a decision was made to prevent the enemy from seizing the collective farm livestock. They tried to get him out, and where possible, they handed him over to military units.
The situation near Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942 was completely different, when there were forty-degree frosts. There was no talk of any dinner then. We advanced, then retreated, regrouped forces, and as such there was no positional warfare, which means it was impossible to even somehow organize life. Usually once a day the foreman brought a thermos with gruel, which was simply called “food.” If this happened in the evening, then there was dinner, and in the afternoon, which happened extremely rarely, it was lunch. They cooked what they had enough food for, somewhere nearby, so that the enemy could not see the kitchen smoke. And they measured each soldier a ladle into a pot. A loaf of bread was cut with a two-handed saw, because in the cold it turned into ice. The soldiers hid their “rations” under their overcoats to keep them warm at least a little.
Each soldier at that time had a spoon behind the top of his boot, as we called it, an “entrenching tool” - an aluminum stamping. But I must say that it served not only as a cutlery, but was also a kind of “calling card.” The explanation for this is this: there was a belief that if you carry a soldier’s medallion in your trouser pocket-piston: a small black plastic pencil case, which should contain a note with data (last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, where you were called up from), then you will definitely be killed . Therefore, most fighters simply did not fill out this sheet, and some even threw away the medallion itself. But they scratched out all their data on a spoon. And therefore, even now, when search engines find the remains of soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War, their names are determined precisely from the spoons.
During the offensive, they were given dry rations - crackers or biscuits, canned food, but they really appeared in the diet when the Americans announced their entry into the war and began to provide assistance to the Soviet Union. The dream of any soldier, by the way, was fragrant overseas sausages in jars.
- Were “front-line hundred grams” really given out?
- Alcohol was given only at the front line. How did this happen? The foreman arrived with a can, and in it was some kind of cloudy liquid of a light coffee color. A pot was poured onto the compartment, and then each was measured with the cap of a 76-mm projectile: it was unscrewed before firing, releasing the fuse. Whether it was 100 or 50 grams and what strength, no one knew. He drank, “bit” his sleeve, that’s all the “drunkenness.” In addition, from the rear of the front, this alcohol-containing liquid reached the front line through many, as they now say, intermediaries, so both its volume and “degrees” decreased.
- Often in films they show that a military unit is located in a village where living conditions are more or less human: you can wash yourself, even go to the bathhouse, sleep on a bed...
- This could only happen in relation to headquarters located at some distance from the front line. But at the very front, the conditions were completely different - extremely harsh.
- How were the soldiers dressed?
- We are lucky in this sense. The brigade in which I served was formed in Siberia, and God bless everyone with the equipment that we had. We had felt boots, regular and flannelette foot wraps, thin and warm underwear, cotton trousers, as well as cotton pants, a tunic, a quilted padded jacket, an overcoat, a balaclava, a winter hat and mittens made of dog fur. And when we arrived near Moscow, we saw other units: the soldiers were poorly dressed, many, especially the wounded, were frostbitten.
- But how long could it be possible to withstand the cold even in the same clothes as the soldiers of your unit? Where did you sleep?
- A person can endure even the most extreme conditions. Most often they slept in the forest: you chop up spruce branches, make a bed out of them, cover yourself with these paws on top, and lie down for the night. Of course, frostbite also happened: my frostbitten finger still makes itself felt: they had to aim the gun.
- But what about the notorious “dugout in three rolls”, “fire beats in a cramped stove”?
- During the entire war, I equipped dugouts only three times. The first was during the reorganization of the brigade in the rear near Moscow. The second was after the hospital, when we, the convalescents, were again trained in military affairs near the city of Pugachev, Kuibyshev region. And the third - when I had the opportunity to serve as part of the partisans of the Army of the People, formed from the local population and Red Army soldiers who escaped from German captivity. All Polish officers served in the First Polish Division, formed in the USSR, and took part in the battles near the town of Lenino in the Goretsky district of the Mogilev region. After appropriate training, 11 officers of the Polish Army and I (the radio operator) were parachuted into the deep rear of the Germans to strengthen the command cadres of the partisan detachments operating in the area of ​​Lodz, Czestochowa, Radomsko, Petrikov. Then, indeed, especially in winter, dugouts were dug, stoves were made from barrels, instead of beds, beds were dug in the ground, which were covered with spruce branches. But such dugouts were a very unsafe place: if a shell hit, then everyone who was there died. When they fought at Stalingrad, they used gullies in the steppe as defensive structures, in which they dug like caves, where they spent the night.
- But, probably, units and subunits were not always on the front line, they were replaced with fresh troops?
“This was not the case in our army; they were taken to the rear only when there was almost nothing left of the unit except its number, banner and a handful of fighters. Then the formations and units were sent for reorganization. And the Germans, Americans and British applied the principle of change. Moreover, soldiers were given leave to travel home. In our entire 5-million-strong army, and today I can say this extremely seriously, only a few received leave for special merits.
- There are famous words of a song from the movie “Shield and Sword”: “I haven’t taken off my tunic for a month, I haven’t unfastened my belts for a month.” Was this really the case?
- We went on the offensive near Moscow on December 5, 1941, and only on April 30, 1942, our brigade was withdrawn for reorganization, because almost nothing was left of it. All this time we were on the front line and there was no talk of any bathhouse or changing of clothes. There was no place to do it and no time. I can give only one example when I had to “wash myself” - forcedly. This was during the liberation of P.I. Tchaikovsky’s homeland - the city of Klin. I saw a clump of hay on the ice of the Ruza River. And since our guns were horse-drawn, I thought: we need to take and feed the horse. And although the frost reached 40 degrees, after walking just a few meters on the ice, I fell into the water. It’s good that we had 3-meter cleaning rods for cleaning cannon barrels. My comrades handed me such a pole and pulled me out of the river. The water immediately froze on me, and it was clear that I had to warm up somewhere. The house of the great composer, which was on fire, saved me. I ran to him, stripped naked and began to warm myself and dry my clothes. Everything ended well, only the dog fur mittens broke after drying out. I had just managed to get dressed and run out of the house when the roof collapsed.
- But if it was not possible to observe basic hygiene rules, then, probably, there was a danger of infectious diseases...
- There was a problem of lice, especially in the warm season. But the sanitary services in the troops worked quite effectively. There were special “vosheboki” - cars with closed van bodies. Uniforms were loaded there and treated with hot air. But this was done in the rear. And on the front line we lit a fire so as not to violate the rules of camouflage, took off our underwear and brought it closer to the fire. The lice just crackled and burned! I would like to note that even in such harsh conditions of unsettled life in the troops there was no typhus, which is usually carried by lice.
- And when did the troops begin to dress in short fur coats, for the supply of which to the USSR, as is alleged, almost all the sheep in Mongolia were put under the knife?
- They talk a lot about them, but in reality very few received such uniforms. The newspaper “Narodnaya Volya” published nine issues of notes by a certain Ilya Kopyl, which allegedly tell the “truth” about the war. He writes: what kind of partisan movement could we be talking about in Belarus? They say these were Moscow NKVD organizations that were dropped from planes wearing chic white sheepskin coats. They organized sabotage against the Nazis, then hid in the forests, and local civilians suffered from such “provocations,” who were dealt with by the angry Germans, even to the point of burning villages.
Moreover, this author, by the way, who served his entire life in the Soviet army, although already in peacetime, insists that there was no Great Patriotic War in Belarus, that Germany, in collusion with the Soviet Union, attacked Belarus. And the struggle on its territory was between the “Moscow partisans” and the police. This is absurd, because the BSSR was an integral part of the USSR! It turns out that our republic attacked itself?!
It turns out that this man, being in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the USSR and then Russia, carried a stone in his soul for 25 years and decided on this pseudo-revelation only when he received a high pension from the state: it is twice as much as that of me, a war veteran, and in further chairman of the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee and deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee of the BSSR.
Personal memories of the war, if I may say so, boil down to the fact that he, then a boy, was treated to a chocolate bar by the “kind” occupiers.
War veterans protested against this publication by picketing outside the editorial office of Narodnaya Volya and demanded an answer from the newspaper's leaders, but the newspaper's editor-in-chief, I. Seredich, explained this by freedom of speech and the press. A shame!
We must understand that the youngest veterans who were called to the front during the Great Patriotic War were born in 1927, and today they are already 83 years old. A maximum of 10 years will pass, and there will be no direct participants in the war. Who will defend the truth about the struggle of our people against Hitler's expansion? Therefore, I believe that the republic needs a law that would protect the memory of the war from the encroachments of various kinds of falsifiers. After all, inciting national hatred is punishable in our country! Why do sabotage against the very foundations of the life of our people - its history - go unpunished?! Why are the ideological vertical, the Ministry of Defense, silent?
And if we return to the, frankly, inhuman conditions in which we had to fight, then only our people could withstand all these tests; no French, English or American could endure such hardships and make a decisive contribution to the defeat of the brown plague.

The Wehrmacht lived according to the daily schedule. In the memoirs of Soviet front-line soldiers, one can find the statement that at the beginning and end of an artillery attack from the enemy side, it was possible to synchronize watches. And during lunch, be calm - the Germans will never attack at this time. There is some exaggeration in this, but only some. The daily routine is mentioned both in the Germans’ letters home and in their memoirs.

In war, besides shooting and dying, you need to do a lot of things - and everything takes time. For example, cleaning weapons, from personal weapons to artillery or tank guns, replenishing ammunition, shells, refueling. Wehrmacht soldiers could combine these procedures with drinking light alcoholic beverages - wine or beer, but getting extremely drunk was forbidden; it was considered a serious disciplinary offense and was strictly punished.

There was time for letters home, reading the press and playing sports. In the latter case, preference was given to team games, mainly football, and there were many photographs from the matches. They also played volleyball if the unit had a net. There was football both in winter and in summer. Sometimes they played matches with neighboring units, but there was no regular championship.

If you believe Soviet films, a lot of time was spent robbing the population, “trigger, milk, egg!”, or searching for partisans, underground fighters, Jews and communists. In reality, both were dealt with by special German Einsatzkommandos or local policemen; the front-line soldiers were mostly disdainful. Although there is evidence that Wehrmacht soldiers also took part in, say, punitive operations.

However, getting hold of food even from the allies was not considered shameful, unless it was not by force, but by ingenuity. For example, in the memoirs “Revelations of a German Tank Destroyer. Tank shooter" Klaus Stickelmeier, who fought on the Pz tank since 1944. IV, as a turret gunner (gunner), recalls how the crew one by one went to dine with the Romanians who were assigned a tank unit, taking advantage of the Allies’ ignorance of the number of tankers in the tank - each ate several times.

We collectively celebrated the birthdays of colleagues, public holidays, and the New Year. A feast was organized and some kind of cultural program. Sex was a concern of the command; camp brothels were organized almost everywhere. During the war years, the Germans organized more than five hundred brothels, equally on the Eastern and Western fronts.

But all was not well with hygiene. In fact, it was possible to wash only in a basin, having previously heated the required amount of water. The same situation was with washing - everyone took care of cleanliness themselves. There were no baths, let alone bath days. Although the most savvy Wehrmacht officers built banks in their units according to the model they had learned from the Russians. Lice were a universal problem.